Conventional dental prosthetics are constructed to accommodate the up and down mandibular movement of the jaw with only limited regard to movement of the jaw in the protrusive and lateral directions. Such appliances may have good occlusal relationship in centric, but may result in complications due to interfering teeth which are not built to conform to the patient's natural mandibular movement.
Techniques for making three directional appliances are known in the art, but are costly, complex and time consuming. One such technique involves the use of a simulator which attempts to duplicate the three dimensional jaw movements of the patient outside of the mouth. This technique is time consuming because it requires the dentist to take a series of bites in the mouth and to make tracings of the patient's mandibular movements. To be successful, the bites and tracings must be taken with great accuracy.
This procedure is extremely time consuming and very expensive, not only in chair time in the dentist's office, but in fabrication time in the laboratory. Accordingly, a simpler method and apparatus is needed to reduce the costs and time required for fabricating three directional prosthetics.